Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*
Living La Vida L
Critics of Juan Carlos, the former King of Spain, fear that the immunity he enjoyed while he was on the throne will allow him to be spared prosecution over the multimillion-pound corruption allegations against him. Lucky chap.
The Galician government on Friday afternoon implored university students not to go home for this 3 day weekend. Here they are at Santiago station later in the evening, complying with that request . . .
And here's a comment from a previous reader to the paper in my regular café yesterday:-
Reader María wrote in July about her daughter's driving test. This reminded me of this blog entry of 15 years ago: Two of the young female members of the English Speaking Society have taken and passed their driving theory test this week. They said they had to study with a local driving school and that the (obligatory) cost for this was around 350 euros. Apparently there is a cartel here in Pontevedra city and this raises the price to way above what it is in other large towns in Pontevedra province. Now, they have to incur even more (obligatory) expense doing the practical exam. Twenty lessons at 20 euros each plus the exam fees. Quite a racket. . . . I have no idea if things are still as bad/corrupt/expensive. Maria?
All that reminds me that, when I first came here, I thought that the 2-3 extra people in the instructors' (full) cars were members of the students' families. But they turned out to be other learners. So, 3-4 pupils all paying the same inflated fee, I guess. No wonder there's so many driving schools still teaching folk how to negotiate roundabouts contrary both to the advice/instruction of the Guardia Civil and to common sense. The bane of my life, as I travel 4 times a day on the test route . . .
Here are Maria's days 46 and 47, on the Spanish custom of decorating graves on November 1. I suspect that, even back when a practising Catholic, I would have thought it odd to lay out large sums for flowers to put on a corpse but, of course, I find it even stranger now. That said, if you believe your loved one is looking down from Heaven, I guess it makes sense. Anyway, here's what Pontevedra's main square looked like yesterday.
Being authentically Celtic - 
- Galicia naturally harks back to the end-October pagan celebration of Saimaín/Samhain, popularly seen as the Celtic New Year and an ancient festival of the dead. Click here and here on this. The latter is in Spanish but it has a video in English abut the appropriate altar for the occasion.
The Way of the World
How modern democracy has given rise to lockdown totalitarianism: The expectation that an omniscient state can prevent every death has led us down a dark path. See the article below.
Finally
To patriotic Spitfire enthusiasts, it has been a source of embarrassment for many years that the only way the Second World War fighter planes can take to the skies is with replica propeller blades made in Germany. Now, a UK manufacturer has produced authentic propellers granted a certificate of airworthiness by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
THE ARTICLE
How modern democracy has given rise to lockdown totalitarianism: The expectation that an omniscient state can prevent every death has led us down a dark path Janet Daley
When a British police commissioner publicly threatens to invade people’s homes at Christmas to break up “illegal” family gatherings, you know that you have entered a new political landscape. At least, new for modern liberal democracies. That sort of edict would scarcely have been noticed in the totalitarian states of the old Soviet bloc, or in the distant darker periods of Western history. How in the name of God, have we got here? That such a statement could be uttered – as it was, for the record, by David Jamieson, West Midlands police and crime commissioner last week – let alone regarded as unsurprising, is an indication of some much larger phenomenon than a viral epidemic.
Indeed, we have known, within living memory, virus threats before which were arguably more tragic in their consequences than this one. The terrible, uncontrollable epidemics of polio in the 1950s killed or paralysed, not the frail elderly, but millions of children and young adults: hence its alternative name, “infantile paralysis”. The Hong Kong flu in the 1960s took roughly 80,000 lives, most of them young, not old.
These events were horrific – but it seemed never to occur to governments at the time to shut down normal social and economic activity in a crude attempt to prevent human contact simply because that was the only apparent means for fighting a contagion that had no cure. Why ever not? Why is this so commonplace now – we are heading into another national lockdown this week – when it was apparently unthinkable then?
Something in our political culture, and our view of ourselves, must have changed very drastically – and oddly almost without our noticing – for the founding principles of liberty (not to mention the basic understanding of what gives meaning and value to human life) to be so readily discarded.
You may say that this present emergency is unprecedented. It isn’t – although detailed reporting of its progress and unlimited speculation about its possible future course certainly is. Interestingly, I have met only two people who have any recollection of living through the 1968 Hong Kong flu epidemic. Both of them were schoolchildren at the time who had personal experience of classmates who were affected by it. But I am willing to bet that no one who has lived through this past year will ever forget it.
So the epidemic may not be unique but the response to it is – and the response has affected more lives than the virus. A good many people feel that these extraordinary governmental interventions are a sign of progress: the logical conclusion of our enlightened concern for others. This is a plausible and perhaps admirable interpretation. But let me, for the sake of argument (since we have an awful lot of time on our hands for arguing at the moment) put forward another possibility.
It might not be a coincidence that these extraordinary acts of repression by governments – in many ways more severe and intrusive into private life than those imposed in wartime – seem to be consistent with quite significant shifts in popular assumptions (or, to put it more aggressively, changes in fashionable thinking). There are two tendencies which are worth noting here. They are actually conflicting but it is perfectly possible for an entire society to believe two contradictory things at once – just as it is for an individual.
The first is probably the most obvious: the belief that the state is now morally responsible for all outcomes. The establishment of social democracy as the prevailing governing system in the advanced nations of the West, bringing with it powers to distribute wealth and prevent gross inequalities, seems to imply that the state is now morally responsible for the welfare of everyone. From this principle of total responsibility it follows that every instance of ill health or death is the direct fault of the Government – even if those who are dying have reached the age at which it is statistically normal for them to die. The state must promise not just the best healthcare it can provide, but a kind of immortality: every death should be preventable. Every death (at whatever age) is a political failing. Those who govern must not only be infinitely caring, they must be omnipotent.
The secularism of modern democracy adds more weight to this. To accept any death (at any age) seems like a medieval fatalism which modern progressive thinking should reject. Along with the passive acceptance of mortality, the notion of acceptable risk – and the individual’s right to choose it – has to go out the window too. We must all look after one another – and we must all be responsible for the fate of everyone.
So nobody can put himself in danger because any unnecessary risk would cause damage to the society as a whole: if I am reckless enough to catch the virus, my healthcare will be a charge upon the state and put everybody else at a disadvantage. So I cannot expect to have any automatic right to do this. It is not just my own business if I endanger myself by breaking the lockdown rules: it is everybody’s business, and that justifies the government in enforcing controls on behaviour that would once have been unconscionable.
You may find this world view attractive. Many people do. But it is important to understand that it is a step in the direction of totalitarianism, perhaps of a benign kind, but once totalitarian forms of rule are installed, they are difficult to remove when they cease to be benign.
But this collectivist ethic is strangely contrary to the other strand of popular consciousness which is playing a major role in today’s events. This is the legitimising of chronic hypochondria. I cannot remember a time when there was such a neurotic obsession with health as a positive condition rather than a simple absence of illness or disability.
Ironically this more or less permanent state of anxiety about one’s individual well-being (which is really a form of narcissism) sits side-by-side with the unselfish commitment to the well-being of society at large. Maybe we have managed to create, with our conflicting compulsions – on the one hand, unrealistic expectations of comprehensive, government-enforced social responsibility, and on the other an equally unrealistic idea of an individual right to be free from pain or suffering – the perfect climate for the mess we are in.
* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.